James Michael McAdoo had 17 points and six rebounds for UNC in Saturday’s win against BC

CHAPEL HILL – It’s said that there are five stages to dealing with loss – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. It’s a process that was multiplied by three this week for the North Carolina basketball team as it tried to come to grips with its first 0-3 start in the ACC since 1996-97.

“It was a long week,” sophomore point guard Marcus Paige said of the Tar Heels’ seven-day layoff between last Saturday’s loss at Syracuse and this week’s bounce-back game against Boston College.

“The beginning of the week sucked, because all you could think about was the past couple of games. You hear all the negativity surrounding the program. But once you got to Thursday or Friday, you can just be happy that you’re going to get a chance to correct everything and finally get a win.”

It was a win that soothed a lot of ills and helped the Tar Heels regain some of their lost confidence, especially the way they executed at times on both ends of the floor.

But how much of that performance can be attributed to UNC’s improvement and how much was the result of the opposition, which came into the game as the only ACC team with a losing overall record?

That’s a question coach Roy Williams and his players will eventually have to ask themselves over the next two days before traveling to Virginia for a difficult road test on Monday.

For at least the first few moments after Saturdays win, the only thing that really mattered is that the Tar Heels no longer have a big zero in the win column and that they’re no longer mired alone in 15th and last place in the newly expanded ACC standings.

“We are very pleased, relieved … you can put any adjective you want in there,” said Williams, who did his part to shake things up by inserting senior guard Leslie McDonald and former walkon forward Jackson Simmons into a surprise starting lineup. “It’s a much better feeling in the locker room.”

One reason for those better feelings is that the Tar Heels didn’t just win, they actually played well in doing so.

The 18 turnovers they forced were their most since the start of league play and their 52.7 shooting accuracy (29 of 55) was their best since making 54.2 percent against Louisville all the way back on November 24.

Included in that performance were four 3-pointers, two each by Paige and McDonald. UNC had made only 9 of its 48 3-point attempts in its first three ACC games combined. In addition to Paige, four other Tar Heels scored in double figures – James Michael McAdoo (17 points), J.P. Tokoto (14), McDonald (10) and Kennedy Meeks (10).

Asked why he thought his team suddenly regained its lost shooting touch, Williams joked that “the stars and moon were aligned properly.” In other words, UNC was simply due after three straight clunkers.

It also didn’t hurt that BC coach Steve Donahue staunchly stayed with his less-than-effective man-to-man defense instead of switching to a zone that has given the Tar Heels fits in recent games.

Both those factors aside, Paige chalked up the shooting improvement to better concentration on the right players taking the right shots.

That’s one of the things he and fellow leader McAdoo spent a lot of time talking about once the denial, anger, bargaining and depression were done during a long week off, and it was finally time for UNC to accept its early fate and move on.

“We knew what we had to do,” McAdoo said. “Something had to change.”

It finally did Saturday.

While it’s too early to determine how much of that change was the Tar Heels’ doing and how much came the fact that they were playing the ACC’s worst team, they can at least breathe a deep sigh of relief over the knowledge that – with their first league win – the worst team in the league is no longer them.